[Lazarus Short]

I suppose all of us have read accounts of dummies who got jailed after someone found child **** on the hard drives of computers they sold or gave to Goodwill, etc.

I have a collection of a dozen or so hard drive discs, and they are being left to oxidize. No child ****, just on general principles. Did you know that a hard drive is nitrogen-filled? That's the reason for all the stickers and sealing tape. The disc surface is covered with a ferrous compound of some sort. Ferrous wheels? Nitrogen atmosphere, no oxidation.

Well, I bought a Kodak digital camera at a garage sale some weeks ago, and the other night I remembered it, dropped in pair of AA's, and it lit right up, took pix, flashed, everything. Oh, there's the memory card. Hmmm? [pushes the little buttons] Oh, there they are, photos of young women and their piercings - ears, noses, lips, eyebrows. Oh, I think I know what's next, yes here they are three or four photos of chests/breasts/nipple rings. No, not appealing, must be the lighting or something [like the subjects?]. Delete, delete. Maybe I should wipe it down with disinfectant. For those of you who live in the area, yes, I bought it in Westport...

Heads up, people, don't you do this, especially when deletion is soooo easy!

Laz

 

[Trippytiger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lazarus Short /img/forum/go_quote.gif Did you know that a hard drive is nitrogen-filled? That's the reason for all the stickers and sealing tape. The disc surface is covered with a ferrous compound of some sort. Ferrous wheels? Nitrogen atmosphere, no oxidation.

They're actually open to the atmosphere through a small, heavily filtered breather hole so that the right amount of pressure can be maintained. So they're only ~79% nitrogen filled.

The seals and stickers are just there to make sure you can't take the drive apart without leaving a visible indication that it's been disassembled.

Thats a funny story!

 

[GAD]

I take my old drives to the shooting range. A .308 will cut through a 3.5" disk like it's not even there.

Gotta shoot it lots of times to lesson the ability to recover smaller sections, but I usually bring them after doing a military-grade wipe on them.

GAD

 

[Sparky191]

Dare I ask, whats a military-grade wipe then?

 

[randerson3024]

I think a military wipe is writing several iterations of patterns, such as all zeros, all ones, or combinations.

 

[Lazarus Short]

Yes, three runs of zeroes, and not even the FBI can retrieve the data - so I'm told.

Laz

 

[Sparky191]

How does that make it military grade? Lost of wiping software can do multiple writes.

 

[Deiz]

"Military-grade" meaning irreversible, and impossible to recover.

Do more than a few destructive writes to a disk and someone trying to read it will have as much like prying out data as they would with a degaussed disk.

 

[stewtheking]

I heard that unless the disk is destroyed by burning or a total physical destroy, it's just a matter of how-much-money-you-need-to-throw-at-the-problem, rather than it being genuinely impossible to recover the data. This could however be an urban myth. Can't remember the source now, but I'm pretty sure it was a data recovery expert of some regard....

 

[PiccoloNamek]

I melt my old disks with thermite.

 

[mjg]

just degauze the hell out of them. Really not a big deal.

Anyway, if anything you have is privledged enough you don't want it shared to begin with, use some sort of encryption. Otherwise, People can learn whatever they need to about you (especially if they are motivated and rich as mentioned). There are plenty of techniques to get a good look at what your doing, besides trying to recover broken hard disks.

The paranoia over questionable photos isn't the half of it. Privacy just doesn't exist anymore.

 

[Sparky191]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deiz /img/forum/go_quote.gif "Military-grade" meaning irreversible, and impossible to recover. Do more than a few destructive writes to a disk and someone trying to read it will have as much like prying out data as they would with a degaussed disk.

Where did you get that defination from.

 

[Deiz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparky191 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Where did you get that defination from.

My head. In this case, that's what it means.. Though not always what it means, obviously.

 

[Sparky191]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deiz /img/forum/go_quote.gif My head. In this case, that's what it means.. Though not always what it means, obviously.

I'm getting the feeling there isn't actually a standard "military grade" its just a term people like to use. You might aswell said "Deiz Grade".

 

[Deiz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparky191 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm getting the feeling there isn't actually a standard "military grade" its just a term people like to use. You might aswell said "Deiz Grade".

Oi, GAD started it.